The Gaddafi syndrome

(Answer to Madeira Hole in the Atlantic)

Madeira's opposition parties may not be great, but the real joke, unfortunately, lies in Portugal.

Jardim wins election with blatant violations of the election laws - state entities turn a blind eye.
The opposition has as many rights in Parliament as they did under Hitler's Reichstag - the state entities turn a blind eye. President Cavaco even refused to go to Parliament since Jardim said the MP were a bunch of lunatics;
Illegalities and corruption are rife - the law and state entities are totally ineffective;
Local political parties denounce what is going on - the parties at a national level cover up for Jardim;
The national news networks judiciously ignore anyone but Jardim and his henchman Guilherme Silva;

Madeira, unfortunately, is a product of Portuguese disfunctionality. Jardim controls the press here and just like in Hitler's Germany, when the propaganda machine is so powerful and its principal message is to incite the population to hatred against the mainland, opposition parties and other figments of Jardim's conspiracy theory, then its hardly a surprise that Jardim keeps winning elections with absolute majorities. The surprise is that he is still treated with such deference at National and European level.

It is perhaps what can be called the Gaddafi syndrome. All the major states were willing to turn a blind eye to the abuses of his dictatorship. Gaddafi was whitewashed and you could rarely find any reference to his abuses in the press. He was portrayed as eccentric, exotic and maybe a little bit mad - and all state leaders were eager to do business with him - until a full scale rebellion broke out, then all those lovely business deals all of a sudden became an embarrassment. ..

Unfortunately, mainland Portuguese are too willing to view Jardim as a slightly mad, exotic, eccentricity - a  product of Madeiran eccentricity - and are unwilling to see their own complicity in maintaining the status quo of this idiotic dictatorship